ALOR-UNO IN NSUKKA

       Alor-uno is one of the towns that make up Nsukka local government Area in Enugu state of Nigeria. It is situated at four kilometres distance towards the west of Kogi state.  A major road from nsukka to idah in kogi state passes through Alor- uno.

            The town, Alor-uno is bounded on the east by Nsukka town, on the west by ibagwa-ani, on the north by obukpa and on the south by edem- ani. There is a natural boundary between Alor-uno and the above named communities, these boundaries are always made of living shrubs of plants which can resist any drought or any form of erosion. Alor –uno is also surrounded by hills which have made some people to regard Alor-uno as a town in a valley. This geographical location has contributed a lot to the land fertility of the town and most especially it has also shaded them from wars and enemies.

           Alor-uno is made up of four quarters: uwani quarter, Ejuona quarter, Amikpo quarter and Ugbene-ero quarter.  Each quarter consist of many villages.

The town originated from igala in kogi state of the middle belt, and the greatest fore-fathers or ancestors of  Alor-uno was Ozuzuikoko. According to our informant,  Ogbu Nwaeze Ozuzuikoko was the son of the king of igala known as “Attaa of igala” and he was a famous hunter and farmer. As a hunter and farmer he came down to this eastern part of the country for hunting and to do other agricultural works. This man later decided to settle permanently at Alor-uno when he discovered that there were many wild animals and abundant land to cultivate on. He got married to Afor, a woman from his place and they gave birth to three sons, she was named after the main and the only market in Alor-Uno.

         These three sons were Ibagwa aka, oji and Ibagwa-Ani, these sons are the great-grand fathers of the present Ibagwa-aka in igboeze south local government area, Alor-Uno and Ibagwani both in Nsukka local government of Enugu state. Ranked in order of seniority, we say that the three towns are brothers, and have many things in common, especially in customs and traditions, because of this relationship, we share in common, traditional celebrations like the Omabe festival, the new yam festival, king correlation e.t.c

      Oji the second child married his own wife and they gave birth to a son called Mkpoke Oji. Mkpoke Oji was the only child of his parents, he later  married and gave birth to a son called Ero Mkpoke Oji. Ero Mkpoke Oji on his own got married and had three sons just like his great-grand father Ozuzukoko. His sons are Uwani-Ero, Ejuona-Ero and Amikpo-Ero, according to seniority. His sons represent the three main quarters in Alor-uno today. The fourth quarter as we have stated in the introduction of this work is Ugbene Ero also has many villages within it. The people of this particular quarter are said to have come from different places to settle while some of them are regarded as slaves of the town and thereby do not have things in common with other quarters. According to our informant ‘Adaogu Obioma Omeje’ the people of the town changed the town’s name from Ero-Mkpoke Oji or Ero-Uno to Alor-uno in the year 1958 when she was at the age of 30.

     Alor-uno is known for agriculture which was their occupation then and even now. The land is very fertile for many tropical crops. Due to their interest in agriculture, some have left to other places like kogi and benue state to mention but a few, due to insufficieny of land for agriculture. The people of Alor-uno do not depend on farming only, some of them are government workers, Some engage themselves in trading. Both Alor men and women are known for their industrious life, their women never depend on their husbands, they help in one way or the other in the caretaking of their families. As traders, one can find Alor-uno people all over Nigeria.

     Just like many other community, the people of Alor-uno believe in African traditional religion which is the bound between three brothers as mentioned above. But when modern civilization came, it influenced their belief system which made some to stop worshipping other gods. The white men came into this town with different churches like protestants, Roman catholic and Anglican church of God according to the king (Igwe Agabaidu Ngunwe Eze) which now stands as the eldest man in Ugbele Ani village in Alo-Uno. The Alor-uno indigenes are noted for their uprightness. They believe in the efficacy of traditional justice. They have opposed all attempts to have a police post near them. The people believe that police or the white men justice is one that can be bought by the highest bidder, and  that it is for those who have more connections with people in power.

     In Alor-uno, they have traditional rulers and elders. These are the peace makers in the town, the traditional rulers always rule thier respective villages, and they hold such titles as Ozioko, Ede, Otamashi, Aruma, Asogwa and Mkpozo. They settle cases in the town and see to the welfare of the people. They are the highest central ruling body in the town, their decision is binding and final on all citizens. They can pronounce punishments such as fines termination, or isolation to anybody who goes contrary to the rules and norms of Alor-uno people. The people call the police only if a person is guilty and refuses to accept his guilt, if the police could not settle the case, they will then charge the person to court, but this rarely occurs.

     In the olden days women were given out in marriage at a very tender age. During this period it was not surprising, therefore, to see a young girl or woman marrying a man as old as her father. When modern civilization came, the forced marriage stopped. The parents started sending their daughters to school to acquire knowledge before giving them out for marriage. Alor-uno grew and became one of the most popular villages in Nsukka ideke alumona, both  financially and in creativity. According to our informat, (igwe agabaidu ngwunwaeze) Alor-uno had the biggest market and the largest expanse of land in Nsukka, our boundary with other Nsukka villages was located at a point called “ogige nsukka” it means “nsukka boundary”, where the nsukka main market is located today.

The market in Alor-uno which is known as Afor market, was named after the wife of the first man who lived in the land. The market lost its dignity at the time when strange  men who are were not from Alor-uno formed the habit of stealing from the people who came to the market to sell their wares, this later lead to the killing of a woman in the process of compelling her to bring out her money. Stealing a hydra-headed monster ravaged the village of alor-uno. The mayhem generated by this act of stealing resulted in the intra-conflict we had with the Nsukka villages in which many lives were lost and property destroyed.

It is this state of affairs and conflict that necessitated the people of Alor-uno  to seek for powers in other to defend their children, wives and livestock from being killed. They came together in agreement to call a very strong native doctor who put all of them into a covenant and a goddess was invoked into the artefact in the forest, which Alor-uno  shared as boundary in Edem-Ani and is still known as the evil forest in the land. According to (Atamah Ngwu) an elderly man in the village of Ovoko-Ani, he said that after the covenant and lots of incantations done in the forest, the woman demanded for a human sacrifice, when she said that, the elders in the forest stepped aside and made an agreement that they will sacrifice the woman herself because nobody was ready to bring out his child for sacrifice. They decided to use her so that she will not raise a similar alter in another village. Because of this the deity became the most powerful in Alor-uno and in other villages in Nsukka cultural zone.

            The deity safeguarded them and prevented so many enemies from seeing them. In the long run, so many other smaller deities originated from the main deity, some of them are okareke, Ezeowo, Edi, Ngbedike, ego ego and many more.

            The then chief of Nsukka villages (igwe ezema onyishi ) has part of his root from Alor-uno in other words his mother was from Alor-uno. He decided that the conflict which existed must end, he then called his onowu and chief priest together and gave orders that the war should be brought to an end. At the end of the war, the people of Alor-uno lost most of their lands to their enemies because of that Alor-uno indigenes fled from their land to places like Alor-Agu, Umu alor, Alor-nkanu, Alor-onitsha and even some part of Ebonyi state and in each of these places mentioned above has the deity as their god.

          

                    CHAPTER THREE:  THE COMING OF THE MISSIONARIES.

                 In the year 1857, the Anglican church came to Alor-uno, the traditional rulers, of course did not welcome them with opened arms at all, they antagonised them and refused to give the church a land to build on, but two men donated their lands to the church and they were killed by the traditionalists because of it. The Anglican church really made impact in the lives of the villagers, they built two schools for the people before the coming of the Catholic and presbytarian church in 1903.

                  On the advent of these churches in the land, many more schools were built, the churches built several hospitals where free administration of drugs were given, pregnant mothers were taken care of and were adviced not to give birth at home anymore, the men were also appealed to, to bring their women to the hospitals for labour so that proper care would be given to them.

The churches went ahead, to provide the people of Alor-uno with pipe-borne water; they also influenced and catalysed the provision of electricity to the people. The first transformer in the whole of Alor-uno was bought by a white garment church known as (Jehovah Messiah Alleluya Hosanna mission), this church was headed by a prophetess named Ngozi Ogbu, a native of Umuegbede village in Alor-uno.  She was formerly in Okuzu, Anambara state as a prophetess, before deciding to relocate to her home town to minister to her people.

              She had so many followers and thugs, which she used to force the people to surrender their charms and personal gods (chi), the traditionalists and idol worshipers in the community then were her sworn enemies, many threatened publicly never to rest until she was buried, she destroyed their idol shrines and shattered their consecrated symbols of deities, she and her followers even invaded houses to remove charms and beat up those who refused to surrender their charms, sometimes she goes naked and rubs her feaces and urine on herself to get rid of some buried charms. In the process of getting rid of charms, she sings a particular song

                    “ihe onye metara nya buru, nya buru,

                       Ihe onye metara nya buru,

                       Akam adiro ya.”

Meaning, what anyone sows he reaps. This continued for a while and the elders of the land had to sue the prophetess and her church to court, the case was  resolved in ikeja high court in lagos state, Nigeria. The court ruled that the white garment church should mind their own activities and not intrude on the traditionalists.

                        The white garment church collected some of the land belonging to Umuegbede village and built their church on it. She once took her members on a supposed missionary journey to kano state on foot, in the process some died on the way due to swollen legs, hunger and weakness. Some of them made it to kano but they came back on a vehicle, on that same missionary journey she planted a branch in lugbe, airport road, Abuja, which is still in existence. Atimes she locked up her members in a private room within the church premises for dry fasting and prayers,  for seven days or more, and in the process some of them died.

     Some of the church elders were still idol worshippers and so compromised the church, after going to church and acting as good Christians during the day, they still worshipped those idols in secret. Most of them only went to church to get positions and gain respect in the society, some of them attended churches to get scholarships for their children.

 After some years of conflict between the prophetess and the traditionalist, she died in the process of destroying another deity in Enugu-Ezike. Before she died she ordered her followers not to bury her because she would resurrect after three days, but according to one of our informants ( Mr Obeta Ayogue), she never resurrected instead her corpse was smelling before her burial. Though she died, her church still exists now in Alor-uno main market.

                                      CHAPTER FOUR

THE FIGHT BETWEEN THE INDIGENES AND THE NON-INDIGENES

In 2003, during the election of the PDP chairman and the counsellor, the three(3) indigenous sons of Alor-Uno fought against the other part with the sole aim that they will produce the counsellor for that season. During the election period, the people of Alor- Uno were never in good terms with one another especially the indigenes and non-indigenes, this conflict lasted for about three months but no life was lost.

       The fight started on the campaign ground, when one of the indigenous members of the village called the other, a slave. This resulted to a fight on the campaign ground and so many people were wounded. The king, (Igwe Agabaidu Ngwunweze), then declared that there should be no campaign again in the land which will lead to no fight. He succeeded with the help of the police. The people lived together pretending as if there was no conflict but within them there was a cold war. Sometimes, the youths of the opposing parties engaged themselves in physical fights which led to injuries.

The young females of the non-indigenes usually had unwanted pregnancies in their fathers’ houses and engaged themselves in incest. Their young males were always the cause of various problems in the village, they smoked indian hemp, sold peoples’ land without permission from the owners of the land, and also wore masquerade and in the process they flogged people, extorted money from them. The people labelled their actions as stealing or theft, these usually resulted in conflicts.

The indigenes on the other hand, were always very proud and they frequently insulted the non-indigenes. They sometimes committed incest as well. The kingship belongs to the indigenes the cabinet members of the village are made up of 23 people from different villages in Alor-Uno. The indigenes are always the Attamah Adoro (chief priests) of the town because they are the only ones who have access to the main deity of the land. Attamah Adoro, the town’s mouth piece of the gods is always the person who has the final say in every matter, he also always serves as the traditional prime minister of the town. In other words, he crowns the king during the coronation ceremony.